


Guardian Angel

by MadManta



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Banter, Comedy, Crack, First Kiss, M/M, Rude's POV, Surveillance, Vague OOCness Because of How Ridiculous This Shit Is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28072128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadManta/pseuds/MadManta
Summary: Rude has to go undercover to root out some highly sensitive Shinra equipment jackers, and Reno is there to watch over him...from a camera.
Relationships: Reno/Rude (Compilation of FFVII)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34





	Guardian Angel

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone, this was my contribution to the 2020 Turks Zine, Midgar Blues! It's not my usual type of content because it had to be under 5K *and* SFW, which is really a strain for me LMAO. As it is, I figured I'd offer it up to you, as goofy and weird as this fic is.

Rude shut the door to the apartment with a soft click. He nearly toed out of his shoes, but stopped with a resigned sigh. This was a normal habit for him, but not one he’d taken since living here. He’d been interrupted on his ratty couch from reading reports too often to know it was wiser to be ready to jump into action. He did however shoulder out of his jacket, tossing it across the one rickety kitchen chair.

The slightly tinny voice of his partner buzzed into his ear. “Home sweet home, huh?”

The apartment was bugged by Shinra on purpose. When Rude’s heavy footsteps clattered along the old hardwood floor, Reno would know he’d arrived, if he hadn’t been watching the security camera footage. It was for Rude’s own safety, but it still caused an unsettling twist of foreboding to coil in his stomach when he thought about his every movement and utterance on tape.

“I hate it when you do that,” Rude said to the open air. He unbuttoned his cufflinks to roll his shirt sleeves to his elbows. “At least give me some time to do a perimeter check so I have some semblance of privacy for a few brief minutes.”

“What if I closed my eyes?” Reno quipped in that nasal, know-it-all tone. 

Rude just rolled his eyes and purposely avoided looking in the southwest corner of the room, or at the lamp or the radiator. He knew where all the cameras and audio equipment were placed, but if he squinted, he could pretend he was alone. He didn’t respond to his partner’s taunt, but walked to the small bed pressed against the wall furthest from the window. It looked forlorn, with a thin blue blanket tucked tightly around the twin mattress. Under the bed were some of the scattered reports he’d been scribbling together. He picked them up and took the ten short steps to the kitchen counter, where he could work on his reports in peace.

He only had one of his favorite ballpoint pens left, and when he clicked it on, he felt an amused sense of peace. He was living in a glorified surveillance shack while they he tracked the movements of a Sector 3 gang; he couldn’t even take his shoes or his shouldered gun holster off, for fear of them bursting through the front door ( _again_ ). But _at least_ he had his pen.

He was two sentences into his nightly log when that voice, like an irritating fairy godmother, lit up his brain again. “Are you really givin’ me the silent treatment?”

Rude’s fingers clutched around the pen, the leather of his gloved fingers squeaking in protest. “I have been out all day in dingy alleyways, rooftops of condemned buildings, and half in-and-out of sewers. I just want to write this down, take a shower, eat a protein bar and fall asleep.”

He waited for the inevitable reply but got none. Relieved, he was able to scratch out two more boring paragraphs.

“But I’m bored, yo.”

“Don’t you have something better to do?” Rude said, not looking up as his even-handed penmanship slowly filled the report with inane details no one was going to read.

“Than hang out with my partner? Nahh.”

Rude grunted in response and turned to a fresh page.

“Did you get into any trouble?”

He put the pen down with an irritated slap. “No, Reno, I did not. Were you just sitting by the surveillance equipment, waiting for me to get back?”

“…When you say it like that,” Reno began.

“What are you, a lap dog?”

Rude nearly smirked when he heard Reno suck at his teeth, like he always did when he was just a little pissed off at something. Rude tipped his head down to hide the potential for _someone_ catching him enjoying this conversation.

“We’re all Shinra’s dogs, dickhead,” Reno huffed. “I just don’t have anybody else’s ass to sniff right now, so.”

Rude barked out a laugh and then swore.

“Ha!” Reno shouted. “Made you laugh. You like hangin’ out with me, yo. I’ve been alone for two weeks! Give me a break!”

“Did you try to hump Tseng’s leg?” Rude said, the grin fully audible now. Damn the man. “Is that why he banned you from the office and sentenced you to ‘creep on Rude’ duty?”

“Nah, I’d already barked up that tree last week,” Reno said in that smug tone of voice that made Rude’s head hot, though whether it was from anger or something else, it was hard to say.

“I’m regretting the dog metaphor, thank you,” Rude replied, tipping his head up and gazing at one of the cameras directly. He flipped it off.

Reno’s laugh, nasal as it was, caused Rude’s stiff spine to relax. Rude resigned himself to entertaining his partner, at least for a little while. “Fine. You wanna talk shop?”

Reno’s excited affirmative response made it easier to grease the wheels of conversation.

* * *

The investigation continued, and Rude was beginning to grow dependent on his evening round-up with his partner. The Sector 3 slums were a particularly dim and untraveled place that was full to the brim with seedy gangsters and suspicious revolutionaries. The food sucked, the drinks sucked, and most of all, the company sucked.

Rude always kept his gun holster on despite it being impractical to have the leather harness under his shirt. The crew he had been infiltrating did not appreciate being overdressed nor showing off fire power, so he had often times worn the harness itself under a raggedy t-shirt while a gun was tucked more sensibly in the waist of his pants. He never took off his sunglasses or his gloves, and he had a couple of knives stashed on his person at all times. As a Turk, he was never so weighed down with extra bits and bobs, much less the small audio device he almost never took out of his damn ear.

Who knew that in a t-shirt, jeans and boots, he’d feel more stifled than when he was in a 35,000 Gil suit?

That evening when he shut his ratty door behind him, he found himself pressing his back up against it with a weary sigh. In his hands he clutched a plastic bag of the world’s worst takeout. “Reno,” he called out. “Please tell me you were listening to the last hour of my conversation.”

Rude _never_ initiated the discussion with his invisible listener. It must have truly been a rough one. Reno’s voice was static at first: “Oh! Uh, yeah, kind of. Hang on.” A moment later, the static disappeared. “I mean, technically I was ‘listening.’”

Rude’s eyes squeezed shut in irritation. “Reno…”

“Look, I tuned out, alright?” Reno admitted. “The Chance guy you were talking to was so stupid it was like watching those TV shows they make bad _on purpose_.”

A smile split Rude’s displeased face. “That’s exactly what I wanted to complain about.” Relief rolled through his shoulders when he threw himself into his rickety kitchen chair to dig in to fried rice that was mushy _and_ dry at the same time. Abhorrent. “He genuinely believed chocobos aren’t real.”

“How has he not seen stage coaches?” Reno asked with a shocked laugh. “Or actual televised chocobo races?”

“Robots and computer animation, respectively,” Rude said flatly as he shoveled the food in his mouth. Shiva, it was bad. He’d rather drink nutrient paste. Maybe he’d make a request for it. Tseng would probably oblige him, even if it meant recommending a psych evaluation when he got back.

“And this is one of the big connections to getting to the gang leader?” Reno asked, and laughed. “Are we sure your talents aren’t being wasted out in the slums?”

Rude gave an exhausted sigh, talking with his mouth full. “That’s what I’ve been wondering for ages. They just keep getting more stupid.”

“Maybe this is all a test,” Reno said, the teasing in his voice so quiet and so personal that it made Rude’s stomach twist. “This has all been a ruse set up by Shinra to get you to appreciate my blazing hot intelligence.”

Rude groaned. “If any of you have anything to do with this, I’ll quit. I know I can’t quit. But I’ll do it.” He stared down at the half eaten container of bland fried rice and pushed it away in disgust. “I’ll grow my hair out, change my name, and go farm gysahl greens with hillbillies.”

“Why in the hell would you farm greens for an imaginary animal, Rude?”

“Nevermind. Even if none of you have anything to do with this, I’m still quitting.”

“At least name one of those robot chocobos after me!” When Rude didn’t respond, Reno prodded further: “RoboReno has a great ring to it! Rude? Rude! I can _see_ you! Hey—! Don’t take out the ear piece!”

* * *

Rude was making a very good impression on the gang, The Cactuars. The whole group of idiotic pricks had tattered jackets with glowing green cactuar doodles — badly drawn and in the wrong position — and enough missing teeth to fill a jar to the brim. Rude chose not to wear their gaudy emblem, and he had all his pearly whites, but he was a quiet yes-man, and both Chance and his boss, the elusive ‘Chad’, liked that.

Rude was also very good at poker, and cleaning out Chance’s wallet was the only light he had left in his miserable Cactuar-filled existence.

“I dunno. I think it’s time you meet the boss,” Chad was saying as he stared at the card he’d been dealt. He frowned at it, as if it were difficult to comprehend. “You ran that heist operation slick as shit.”

Rude tried not to wince. The ‘heist’ had been literally a suitcase full of their own goods, a mako-boosted drug called Warp, from Point A to Point B. It was manufactured in a location Rude had not yet been privy to discovering, and part of what made them so difficult to catch was their tendency to run ridiculous routes with newbies. It was like trying to chase dozens of little rats across a ten kilometer area and pin down each one. There wasn’t enough time or resources to bother. “I would be honored,” he said flatly.

“See? I love this guy. He gets it,” Chance said, staring at his cards and then raising. “Plus he’s totally with me on the truth about chocobos, too.”

Rude had chosen wisely a decade ago to adopt sunglasses as his most permanent fixture. It made hiding his expressions of disgust easy. “The evidence is compelling,” he admitted.

Chad laughed. “Oh yeah. Chaz has definitely got to meet you.”

Cacophonous laughter filled his ears. “ _Please tell me you heard that shit! Oh my god!_ ”

“Chaz, sir?” Rude replied, his tone as bland as paste.

“The big boss!” Chad said. “What, you though it was me? Chance talks a big game about me, but believe me, Chad’s no Chaz!”

“ _Oh my god. Rude. This can’t be real. I have to turn off the transmission. I’m going to piss myself. Who are these dumb cocks?_ ”

“Would Chaz have more work for me?” Rude asked softly, and laid his cards down. The four other men at the table groaned as he pulled the chips to him, again. It wasn’t hard to beat men with the brains of toddlers. He supposed he’d seen them get beaten across the head enough to understand why they were that way.

“Oh yeah. Chaz deals with the real big stuff,” Chad said confidentially. “Movin’ mako, and the like.”

“Mako?” Rude said in the most clueless voice he could muster.

“Yeah, the city runs on it, duh,” Chance laughed with a snort.

“ _Did I say I turned off transmission? I didn’t. They really think you’re one of ‘em, don’t they?_ ”

The only person on the damn planet who could make Rude flustered was tittering away in his ear, and he was doing his best not to let his expression change. “Well, yeah, but, what do we need it for?”

“Whaddya think’s been in those cases, cue ball?” Chad laughed. “Warp is loaded with mako. We been suckin’ it out of the Sector 3 Reactor for months.”

“ _Cue ball? Man, I haven’t called you that since we were rookies. These guys are kinda assholes._ ”

The cards were dealt out again and Rude tugged his gloves tighter on his fingers as he looked at his new hand. “Must have one hell of a power bill,” he said.

“That’s the beauty of it! It’s on Shinra’s dime,” Chad said. “Ah, crap, I fold.”

Rude was proud of his acting as he immediately hunched up. “I thought we weren’t getting involved with them?”

“ _We’re_ not. No wonder you like this guy, Chance,” Chad said with a grin missing three teeth. “He makes you look smart.”

“ _I have half a mind to come find you and beat the snot out of these Cocktuars. Smart!?_ ”

Rude’s acting cracked as he struggled to not burst out laughing. Instead it just sounded like a very deep-throated hock. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, boss.”

“Don’t apologize! You fit right in. Other than your weird-ass name, but y’all have your shortcomings.”

“Well, as long as Chaz has work, I’ll take it. I need the money,” Rude said. He folded as well.

Chance lifted an eyebrow. “Not after tonight. Damn. This is the third time you’ve cleaned me out. You got X-ray glasses?”

Rude shook his head. “Can’t afford ‘em,” he said blandly, and the others laughed and changed the subject. Off the hook, for now.

* * *

“Chaz”, it turned out, was just another step up the ladder, still far from the top. The goose chase was grating on Rude. He hadn’t had a moment’s peace in weeks and he had been hoping to crack this dumb case in two days. It wasn’t the drugs they were after; it wasn’t even the siphoned off mako. Rude was supposed to find out _where_ they were making the drugs, because the highly delicate equipment able to compress mako energy down with sugar pills into an edible form was very expensive.

And very stolen.

He remembered the meeting quite clearly: Hojo, usually so preoccupied with his (“definitely not”) human experiments, had been seething, pacing back and forth in the executive conference room. Only the VP and his loyal squad of cronies were present to handle this very important deed, no other directors or the President himself.

“I want to know _who_ gave those worthless ants access to our labs,” Hojo said, his oily face wetter than usual with furious sweat. “And I want that equipment _back_. Not everything can just be irradiated with mako! Smaller, more delicate things take much more kindly to _candy_.”

Rufus shrugged. “Is this costing us money, this loss of your precious machine?”

“It’s costing me _time_ ,” Hojo said, stopping next to Rufus’ seat. He bent down to his eye level, his gaze glassy like a fish’s behind his spectacles. “The more time I’m wasting not finding the answers your father wants, the more money is spent on _me_ and _my time_. This should be nothing for your little…” Hojo stood up again, gesturing in their direction.

Rude glanced at Tseng. He was cool as always, though his hands were below the table. Rude could hear him twisting a pen to its breaking point. Tseng, more than any of them, hated Hojo, but he was a stone-cold professional. Reno was just staring at his phone, thumbs tapping over it like he was messaging someone — or playing a game.

“Yeah, yeah, we can do it,” Reno said, waving a dismissive hand. Rufus and Tseng’s eyes had leveled on him, showing held back fury, but Reno wasn’t out of line. “That thing’s gotta take a lot of power and a scientist to run it, right? How hard could it be?”

Rude cursed the memory now, since it had been much more complicated than they’d anticipated. They found the _Cocktuars_ — the only name Rude could call them now, thanks, Reno — as the main source of a sudden influx of Warp, but the usual “torture until they give up a name” wasn’t very effective on men so dumb and actually clueless. Chance had hardly met Chaz, and Chaz was only moving around 10 gallon tanks of compressed mako energy. How far up were they going to have to go to find their actual source?

Rude was also the more patient of the available Turks. Reno would have cracked his EMR over the Cocktuars’ skulls on Day 2, and Elena, while strong and gutsy, could barely handle Reno’s antics. Rude, on the other hand, was big and quiet and could pull off “All brawn, no brains” easily, so he had fallen into the role of slum rat.

When he returned to his bugged apartment, he’d had no one in his ear for four hours. He knew he was getting closer; the tanks had to go _somewhere_ , even though all Chaz seemed to be doing was filling them up. “We’re close to a breakthrough, I think,” Rude said to the open air, pulling off his sunglasses and rubbing his eyes. “I hope.”

The earpiece came to life in his ear. “There you are!” came a distinctly feminine voice. “Did you find the machine?”

“Elena?”

“Oh! Yeah. Hi, it’s me!”

“Where’s…?”

“Reno can’t just stalk you all day, every day,” Elena said matter-of-factly. “He’s needed elsewhere today. What’s your breakthrough?”

Rude sighed, putting the sunglasses back on. He did not feel entirely comfortable having anyone _else_ see him so… Naked. “New guy is the one siphoning out the mako. It must go somewhere — it’s in very small cannisters. Fit for a creepy machine.” He turned on the cheap coffee pot and stared at it. “If I can just track one of them, we’ll be set.”

“Who do you think the leak is? At the company?” She sounded vaguely interested, though Rude could swear he heard her turning pages. Maybe it was of the reports. Maybe it was a food magazine, for all he knew. God, he missed reading for entertainment.

“Honestly? Whoever is running the machine. I can’t imagine they taught any of these dipshits how to work something like that,” he groaned.

Elena let out a surprised laugh. “Mr. Rude..!”

He just groaned again. “This is why I don’t talk.”

She laughed easily this time, and it softened Rude’s shoulders. “It’s more fun when Reno is around, anyway. He has the best vulgar stories about you two.”

He rolled his eyes as he poured himself a mug. “He gonna be back tomorrow?”

“Aww, do you miss him?” she sang.

“Ifrit’s balls, you’ve been hanging out with him too much. Good _night_.”

“Hey wait, you can’t just take out the ear piece—!”

Rude rolled his eyes, laying it down on the table and sipping at the terrible coffee. The strange thing was, normally Reno was with him through the whole day, but he’d been alone until he’d returned to his apartment. He’d assumed the earpiece had some kind of wireless service that worked anywhere in the slum, but why hadn’t he heard anything otherwise?

Rude just shook his head and wandered into the bathroom, wondering how long it would take to scrub the pungent smell of mako out of his skin.

* * *

Rude had a lot of dumb luck in his life, even without using Luck Up. He usually got the last good muffin at long corporate meetings. He never spilled his coffee when people ran into him. The one time Reno had harassed him to use a UFO catcher, four drinks in at a charming little above-plate festival, he had won a stuffed octopus in sunglasses on his first try.

It would make sense, then, that Rude had used up that good luck.

It had all happened while he slept. His second night on the job of filling mako tanks, he’d placed a tracker on one cannister and let it be carted off. He’d gone home and radioed in serial number of the tracker. Reno, who had returned to his ear piece the day after Elena had teased him, had announced the thing wasn’t moving and to head to sleep.

The next thing he remembered was the pounding on his door and the crashing of glass. Rude jerked out of bed in nothing but his sweats at the sight of at least one goon throwing himself through the one dirty window in his apartment. He must have forgotten to put the ear piece in before going to sleep — he’d been a little lax lately — and of _course_ it was on the second break in in this damn apartment. His door was still being pounded on as the goon, dressed similarly to his Cocktuar colleagues but with a mask covering most of his face and hair sticking up in a great, stupid pompom behind his head, dashed to the bed.

Rude rolled onto the floor, sleep fogged brain slowing him down to not catch the boot that flew into his ribs. Growling, Rude reached for the man’s shin and yanked him to the ground with a great thud and punched him once in the face with enough force to put him out of commission. Rude stumbled to his feet, squinting in the darkness for his gun holsters. He pulled them on over his bare shoulders just in time for the door to get kicked down and a flood of men rushed in.

Eight were there, all with guns raised at him. He could recognize Chaz in the dark, and then an unfamiliar voice of a ninth man walking in. “You thought you could fuck with us, did you?” the man said. “The Cactuars have their spines in many pies!”

“You tell ‘em, Randy,” Chaz said.

“Who the hell is Randy?” Rude asked, and a gunshot flew past his head. His hands flew up in surrender.

“The lead on this operation! You thought I wouldn’t notice one of the trackers I helped create one one of my mako tanks?” Randy pushed through the crowd of men, and Rude stared at him, desperate for some kind of recognition to hit him. It didn’t.

Rude frowned a little. “So you’re the one who… Takes the mako to the machine?” he asked quietly.

Randy’s eyes, even in the darkness, flashed with rage. “I am the one who runs the machine!” he howled. “I’m just as important as any other of Hojo’s scientists! He always overlooked me. And now, he’ll regret it. You’ll all regret it!”

Rude stared at him, mouth working. “Couldn’t you just talk to him at your quarterly performance evaluation?” He couldn’t help it, the corner of his mouth almost hitching up in a smirk.

“Kill him!” Randy shouted, just as a much more familiar sound flooded the room: a sharp electric shock followed by a sickening thud. The guns once trained on Rude turned to the door, and there stood Reno, looking particularly unkempt in a wrinkled suit.

Rude didn’t waste a minute, pulling out his handgun and shooting two men in the legs, letting them drop to the ground. He rushed the crowd, tackling another man as he punched him into submission. He missed his gloves, but it was too late, now. At least every sparking arc from Reno’s EMR lit the room.

As Rude stood, another henchman lunged for him. He was stopped as Reno grabbed the man by the shirt and punched him in the stomach with a satisfying ‘oof’. “What the hell are you doing here?” Rude asked, one of the last goons coming up to him getting punched in almost an off-hand manner. “Not that I’m mad. I could kiss you.”

“On your right,” Reno said, and Rude punched the seventh as he came up on his right. “Why don’t you, then?”

Rude’s gaze pinned to the final goon behind Reno, and the man dashed out of the apartment in a screaming flurry. Rude let himself exhale slowly, thumb reaching up at the side of his mouth. That first big kick to the ribs must have punctured something if there was blood coming out of him, but he just shook his head. “Because I want to know how the hell you got in here _minutes_ after they broke in. The surveillance tower is literally at Shinra HQ. Even a helicopter wouldn’t make it down here that quickly.”

Reno looked a little guilty and then cursed, swiftly turning around. “Fuck! We gotta chase down Randy!”

Rude knelt, picking up one of the first men he’d shot in the leg. It was the simpering Randy, who Rude held up by shaggy brown hair. “We got him, Reno. Now answer the question.”

“There may have been a bit of _light stalking_.”

Rude stared at him as he dropped the scientist back down on the floor. “What do you mean, ‘light stalking’.”

Reno knelt down to collec the guns out of all the hands he could reach, especially within reach of their new hostage. “Well, I didn’t really feel comfortable having you be out here alone all the time with only an ear piece, so…”

“Only an ear piece?” Rude asked, dumbfounded. “The whole place is bugged. I thought you had corporate set up relay devices all around the areas I’ve been frequenting. We’ve literally played roshambo with you watching me.”

“So uh, officially, they may not have known about the cameras.”

Rude’s gaze, not hidden behind sunglasses, turned cold and hard. “They _what_.”

“And I may have unofficially been in a van. With most of the surveillance equipment.”

“You. What.”

“I got Tseng’s blessing!” Reno said, spreading his hands with a nervous grin on his face. Rude slowly stalked towards him, stepping over henchman bodies. Reno backed up until he was pressed against a wall, Rude staring down at him.

“You’ve been spying on me, needlessly, on the company dime, _in secret_?” he asked.

“I knew you were going to need it,” Reno babbled. “You literally take your ear piece out at night—”

“Because you’re so damn _annoying_ all the time!” Rude hissed.

“—well aren’t you lucky that the sound of those idiots breaking glass woke me up in the van outside!?”

Rude stared down at him, scrupulously observing Reno’s nervous breathing and attempts to soothe this all over. “You think this makes you some guardian angel for this?”

Reno glanced away from him, trying to look anywhere but his eyes. “When my partner gets put into some stupid situation, yo, I wanna be there for him.”

Rude’s fist balled up in Reno’s shirt, inadvertently closing the perpetually open thing. He stared down at him, trying to be angry, but found only a light sense of amusement tickling at his chest at his partner, who could _easily_ escape this position, squirming under him like a lab rat.

Rude pressed their lips together in a quick, chaste kiss, and then let him go. “That’s for saving my life,” he said, and then stepped away from him as he felt color rising to his own cheeks. “Now I have a very long phone call to make with Tseng.”

He could feel Reno staring at his back, could hear the little choppy, excited breaths coming out of him. “Am I forgiven?” Reno’s voice shook with the effort.

“Guess it’s your lucky day,” Rude muttered, the smirk audible, as he went to gather his clothes. “You’re buyin’ me breakfast after this.”

“You got it, partner,” Reno said breathlessly, and together, they cleaned up their mission.


End file.
